Ariadne had risen to her feet. She began to look about for her discarded clothes. In the past, when she had not dressed quickly enough, Anna—whose masculine attire was much easier to don and doff—had departed without her, leaving her to find her own way out of the Ruelle. “No.”

Anna sat up. “I’m not being dishonest with you, Ari. I’ve told you exactly what I have to offer. If it’s not enough, I won’t blame you if you leave.”

Ariadne stepped into her petticoats. “I’m not leaving.”

Anna looked at her with real curiosity. “Why not?”

“Because,” Ariadne said, “when you want something very much, you are willing to accept the shadow of that thing. Even if it is just a shadow.”

LONDON: SHEPHERD MARKET

It was a grimy dawn, yellow light beginning to seep through the cracks in the heavy gray clouds, when the man half tumbled out of the pub and into the square. He limped along toward Half Moon Street, past the hodgepodge of shops—greengrocers, butchers—that lined the central square. The neighborhood had its charms despite the close quarters and grime, but the man took no notice. He had not been the last patron in Ye Grapes, but the others had drunk themselves unconscious and would soon be treated to a complimentary trip out the back door, where they would be unceremoniously deposited on the pavement to await the coming day.

The killer slipped from one doorway to the next, trailing his prey more for sport than necessity. Stealth was hardly needed here. The man was staggering drunk, singing a tuneless little song, his breath puffing out in white clouds as it met the icy air. He did not seem to feel the cold in his battered coat.

The girl had been too ready, too quickly. She had turned the killer’s own blade on him, sinking it deep into his shoulder. Her death had been messy, fast and brutal; afterward he had been forced to slip away and hide, abandoning the bloody evidence in an empty factory in Limehouse. As he swiftly healed, he had heard the scrape and chitter of an Ourobas demon nearby, drawn by the scent of murder and blood. He did not fear it; demons knew him as kin now.

But he was angry. There would be no more such accidents.

The killer quickened his pace. One, two, three strides and he was upon the man. He grabbed his shoulder roughly and spun him around, shoving him up against a cold brick wall. The man blinked in anger, then confusion. His mouth opened, and a single word passed his lips just before the knife went into his chest:

“You?”

12 REQUIEM

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter, home from the hill.

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “Requiem”